The RIBA-award-winning practice of John Pardey has realised this beautifully simple single-storey family house located within a tranquil setting of New Forest National Park, UK. Completed earlier last year (in 2010), the elegant, linear holiday house boasts an open-plan living area, four bedrooms as well as a dressing room and a study while the floor-to-ceiling windows flood the interior with natural light.

The Watson House by John Pardey Architects; photo by James Morris

About the project:

‘The brief began with the idea of occupying the house for short breaks – a holiday home that is easy to use and the clients wished to live in contact with nature. They wanted a house that offered the opposite to their day to day urban life – a place that breathed, that was open, light, easy to maintain and interacted with the garden and woodland.’

The Watson House by John Pardey Architects; photo by James Morris

‘The design was the result of the idea of a simple linear single-storey form that ‘touched the earth lightly’. Two linear concrete foundations ran along each side of the house (with a basement in the central section) and these supported laminated timber floor, wall and roof panels from KLH timber. The panels, craned over the trees from the road, were erected in less that one week and slender steel columns were employed to support the 15 metre long opening facing onto the woodland.’